7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People

By Daniel Colasimone - 10 Aug 2015

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a book everybody should have on their bookshelf—even if they don’t plan on ever reading it.

Just having it sitting there shows visitors to your house what a go-getting friggen winner you are. An Urban List study has shown that people who own the book are a staggering 98% more successful at life, even though none of those who responded to the survey had read past the introduction.

Basically once you know the 7 things, you’re good to go, so here they are: 1. Be proactive, 2. Begin with the end in mind, 3. Put first things first, 4. Think win-win, 5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood, 6. Synergize, 7. Sharpen the saw.

There you go. Now that you’ve mastered those, we think that since that useful tome was written way back in 1989, it’s time for a sequel. The (blatantly unauthorised) sequel will take the form of an internet list, rather than a book, and it can be found below. It’s for people with a more laissez faire attitude who, rather than taking the world by the scruff of the neck, prefer to sit there and see what it throws at them.

The 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People

1. Let life wash over you. Avoid making tough decisions. Stick with the status quo and hope that things will eventually turn out for the best. If you are in a long-term relationship with someone you despise, for example, wait for them to break it off so you don’t have to go through all the giant hassle of doing it yourself (it helps if you’re horrible to be around). In your work environment, wear the minimum number of pieces of flair. Never volunteer for anything or suggest a better way of doing things. It will just make your colleagues hate you.

2. Never be quite sure where you’re going with this. This can be applied to almost everything, from starting a sentence to getting married. Heck, be that person who wanders around Coles for half an hour with an empty basket because you have no idea what you’re making for dinner. Your wishy washy attitude will piss off everyone around you, but also make you appear somewhat of an enigma. An annoying, harebrained enigma.

3. Treat the world as one big distraction. Say you start a task at work, and you get an email about something else. Put the initial project to one side and attend to the email, even if it’s your mum asking what you want for your birthday in two months or ASOS telling you about their latest flash sale. Once you’ve done that, best to check Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for updates, then check them all once more in case there have been updates while you were checking. By then you’ve probably got some new emails to attend to, and by then it’s almost lunch time, and after lunch you’re always drowsy so OMG this Buzzfeed list is SO TRUE and wow it’s 4:15pm already not much point doing any work now.

4. Accept that you’re never wrong. In any of life’s little negotiations, take a hard-line stance and refuse to compromise. Think you may have been given the incorrect change by your barista? Discussing your pay rate with your boss? Arguing with your partner about who cleans the least? Stand your ground, you are 100% right. If they refuse to come around to your point of view, throw a hellacious tantrum.

5. Always go off half-cocked. Don’t bother reading instructions properly. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Also, the boring part of a conversation is when the other person is talking, so just ignore that bit. When explaining things to others, assume they can read your thoughts and just give them ambiguous, haphazard directions.

6. Be a maverick. Teamwork is for the weak.

7. Refuse to change. You’re perfect as you are. If anyone begs to differ, refer to number 4. If you make a mistake, keep repeating your actions in the same way until the result comes out differently. You certainly have no need for any kind of training, physical or mental. Religion and spirituality are not your bag, baby. Let your troubles and worries build up to the point of explosion, then go on a week-long bender. You’ll be so wrecked afterwards you’ll hardly be able to remember what was bothering you. The only soul food that’s good for you, my friend, is wine or whiskey nom nom nom.

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By Daniel Colasimone

You think darkness is your ally? Dan was born in it, moulded by it. He didn’t see the light until he was already a man. Raised on the mean streets of Bundaberg, he has ended up in Brisbane by way of Italy, South Korea, Argentina and a few other places. When not covering sportsy stuff for the ABC, he writes a fortnightly column for The Urban List on the world of man stuff. Twitter: @DanColasimone

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